Hosts

All three hosts have started well. They've had two wins and a draw between them, and even their heads of state have behaved themselves. Trump stayed away, and actually managed to say normal President-to-sports-team things to the US manager Mauricio Pochettino before the game. Of course this meant the story wasn't mainly about him, so I'm sure we can expect something much less presidential soon.

Following a Mexican opening ceremony where I hadn't heard of any of the pop stars, Canada and the US both gave us basically the same thing. I had to go to iPlayer to watch them because the BBC thought it was more important for us to hear what Wayne Rooney used to do in the tunnel before a game. What did Rooney do in the tunnel before the game? Nothing worth remembering as I type this five minutes later.

I once called Rooney the boring onions, and I meant it as a compliment. It was back when he was a regular England player, and profoundly stupid people were saying he should be dropped. My argument was that when you go to the supermarket and see some onions you haven't seen before, you always want to try them but then when you actually eat them you realise the reason the boring onions are always there is they're the best onions, and Rooney was a bit like that.

The problem is that unless he's on the pitch and there's a chance of him scoring from an overhead kick he is actually pretty boring onions. I still think he was the brightest star in a stellar generation that included Beckham and Gerrard, but that was back then and I don't much care what he thinks about the Paraguayan midfield.

Wandering back in the vague direction of the theme, I can see why Canada went for some unknowns in their opening ceremony, given that the only Canadian performers most of us could name are Justin Bieber, Bryan Adams and Celine Dion. There was Leonard Cohen of course, but he's dead and in any case he never quite had that stadium vibe.

Oh yes, and Michael Buble, who did the song between the opening ceremony and the national anthem. When did this become a thing? Because it's clearly a thing now. The BBC even showed it in their main coverage.

The Americans going with obscure pop stars as well seems less wise and more wilful (and yes I realise talking about pop stars and describing presumably mega famous people as obscure makes me sound like myself, yes I'm doing it on purpose and yes this caveat is a form of copping out). I might liked to see Iggy Pop of course, but if he was already booked I'm sure Rose Royce would have done Car Wash for us. I also didn't see why the female performers had to be so much more sexualised than the men. Not that any of it was half as sexy as Gwen Dickey doing Car Wash, because when is fake corporate sexuality ever half as sexy as the real spontaneous thing, but I don't think that's the point.

Los Angeles didn't have Michael Buble for the intermediate song because Canada isn't America whatever Trump thinks, but they clearly wanted something that would stick in the memory so they went with Katy Perry dressed as half a Christmas cracker. The song she sang is called Wonder, and asks if innocence has to get lost in a cynical world. I guess anyone who used to be married to Russell Brand has the right to pose the question. My view is that I don't know much about innocence but I do know life is interesting, and people who don't agree can fuck off. I find this fends off cynicism, and a lot of people.

There was one more barrier between the fans and the football, the national anthems. Watching other countries do theirs it has struck me that there's always a slight ambiguity for us around ours (setting the flag wankers aside), which is that when your national self-image has understatement and self-deprecation built into it the act of unironically celebrating identity will always feel a bit like you're simultaneously denying it.

The rest of the world doesn't think you need to understand the concept of irony to sing a national anthem, which is presumably why Canada got Alanis Morisette to do theirs. The US played it straight, like they normally do, and to be fair it's one of the better ones musically. It's an odd moment in American history to celebrate though, as it marks the War of 1812, during which the British burnt the White House to the ground. Sorry about that, I guess we could make it up to you by doing it again now.

The non-hosts realised their role was to get their anthems done. Paraguay were so quick it was a surprise to realise it was over, while the Bosnians went with a violin solo. I am here for both of these approaches. I think we could replace our godawful dirge with the last twenty seconds of Bohemian Rhapsody, with or without lyrics depending on the situation. Nothing really matters, nothing really matters to me. As we slide apathetically towards fascism it would capture the national mood perfectly.

I'm not going to summarise everything that happened in the actual football, you may have noticed it isn't that kind of World Cup blog, but it was all top quality stuff from a situationist point of view, by which I mean it was spectacular. Many of my friends were hoping the US came a cropper for political reasons. I didn't think that myself, partly because I'm used to separating football from governments or how could I ever support England but mainly because World Cups are always better when the hosts survive until the later rounds because the air of domestic excitement lasts longer. It would be better if England did well for similar reasons, and also because I'd enjoy it for its own sake. We still have no idea if that might actually happen, but progress from all three hosts now feels like a distinct possibility.